Half Moon Mani with Cult Nails

Working my way through my untrieds, I decided to wear Mind Control from Cult Nails Super Powers collection.  I bought the entire collection to take advantage of the pre-sale pricing and I've given much love to Time Traveler and Clairvoyant, but I'd put off wearing Mind Control until it really felt like a wintry day to wear this vampy shade.

Cult describes Mind Control as "a deep, slate greyed-purple with brain washing bursts of pink/purple glitter that shifts slightly to provide a golden glimmer."  I think the jelly base is more of a dark gray than a greyed-purple, and it's definitely packed with pink/purple glitter. The gold shift is slightly visible around the edges of my nails - especially on my pointer and pinky.  I think the real star of Mind Control is the glitter. There's tons of it so, even though this is a dark color, it keeps sparkling even in low lighting.  Even with a jelly base, Mind Control was good to go in two coats.

I was happy with this mani, but then I received my New Year's Sale package.  I'd been paying attention to my Twitter and noticed Cult was having a flash sale, so I finally got Coveted, Flushed, and Untamed because I wanted to get my hands on the discounted limited edition shades, especially before their 2013 price increase.  I couldn't wait to try Flushed, so I decided to layer!

Since I just found my reinforcement labels, it seemed like a good time to practice a half moon mani. Using my rediscovered stickers, I added two coats of Flushed and got this purple shimmery goodness!

Sunlight - what is that shimmer?! Awesomeness!!

Shade

I loved the way this came out!!!  I love the look of half moon manicures, but I also feel very self-conscious when I'm wearing them.  This mani was so smooth and shiny, it had shimmer and glitter, the moons came out decently crisp, but the overall look was still subtle.  I'm looking forward to wearing Flushed on its own, but I'm going to wear it like this for a few more days first!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore

I've been trying to make a peel-off glue base coat work for me, so that means glitter, glitter, glitter!

It was supposed to be really easy - take some glue like Elmer's, swish it around with a little water in an empty polish bottle, use as base coat, peel off mani when done. Easier said than done because my first few tries didn't work at all! First, I used too much water and the base coat wouldn't dry. Then, I tried again without thinning the glue but I polished my nails before waiting a full 10 minutes for the base coat to dry.  My polish stuck to my nails like cement! Normally, that's good, but not when you want your polish to peel off in one piece. My third try was a charm and my polish peeled off like it was supposed to! What I've learned - glue as a base coat is great if you have 10-15 minutes to let it fully dry, so it looks like I'm going back to regular base coat and Zoya Remove+ for my glitter manis.

For New Year's and my peel-off success, I wore Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore. This is my bottle from the original Spring/Summer 2009 collection. This shade's been re-released through Ji's Bring It Back voting. I'm not sure if the new version is identical to this one, but I still recommend getting your own bottle while it's still around!

RBL's site says that Locavore is a "melange of gold, silver, green and blue glitter," but it's obvious in my bottle and on the nail that this version also has pink glitter.  The base of Locavore is thin and clear so I'm wearing three coats for opacity and it only takes one coat of Seche Vite to make this mani smooth.

After wearing so many glitter polishes with different shapes and sizes in their mix, Locavore is a nice glitter palate cleanser. All the glitter is tiny and round, the color combination is perfectly celebratory, it's opaque enough to be worn without layering over a base color, it's smooth on the nail, and sparkles for days. I love hex and square glitter and colored jelly bases, but I had forgotten how nice it is to wear a straightforward glitter polish like this.

Happy New Year to everyone!! I hope we all have a great 2013!!!